Ray Bulgarin

Rodislav "Ray" Bulgarin (1958-2008) was a Russian Mafia boss and the head of the Bulgarin crime family, a major organized crime syndicate in the Adriatic Sea region and New York City.

Biography
Rodislav Bulgarin was born in the Russian SFSR, Soviet Union in 1958, and he became involved with the Russian Mafia during his formative years. Bulgarin decided to move to New York City during the 1980s and smuggle humans into the United States, and he became the head of his own Mafia family. Bulgarin was busted by the NYPD after receiving a shipment of Albanian sex workers in New York Harbor during the late 1980s, leading to his arrest for human trafficking in 1989 and his deportation back to Russia. Bulgarin became a high-profile figure in global organized crime as a result of his deportation, and he continued to run human trafficking operations in the Adriatic Sea countries during the 1990s and 2000s.

In 2008, Bulgarin decided to return to New York City and expand his business, as he was hoping to purchase the Maisonette 9 nightclub from Tony Prince and the New York Rangers hockey team from Marki Ashvilli, as well as to murder Niko Bellic, who was believed to have stolen $2,000,000 worth of diamonds from Bulgarin. Bulgarin moved into his sister Galina's Forest Hills, Queens apartment alongside his bodyguard Timur Ovchinnikov, and he formed an alliance with fellow Russian mobster Dimitri Rascalov, who decided to help Bulgarin with his hunt for Bellic. Bulgarin and Rascalov's men failed to kill Bellic in an ambush at a Red Hook warehouse, and Rascalov and Bellic would go to war; Bulgarin had other issues to take care of. When Ashvilli refused to sell him the club and, in turn, opened a federal investigation against Bulgarin, Bulgarin hired Prince's bodyguard Luis Fernando Lopez to kill Ashvilli's team of corrupt cops in the 2008 Yorkville parking garage shootout before killing Ashvilli himself at the MeTV building. However, Bulgarin attempted to have Lopez killed after discovering that Tony Prince had attempted to purchase the stolen diamonds from "the Cook", the true diamond thief. Bulgarin succeeded in killing the Cook, but Lopez survived. Lopez would hunt Bulgarin down, destroying the heroin that Bulgarin had received from Rascalov, killing Ovchinnikov and several other mobsters on Coney Island, and chasing Bulgarin to JFK International Airport. Bulgarin attempted to escape in his private jet, but Lopez succeeded in entering the plane as it took off, and he threw a grenade onto the plane before parachuting down safely. Bulgarin was killed in the ensuing explosion, and his gang's presence in NYC was wiped out.